Sustainable care pathways knowledge hub
Our sustainable care pathways knowledge hub is a centralised, collaborative platform where health systems and industry come together. It provides the shared language and evidence base needed to measure, understand and reduce the environmental impact of patient care journeys.
What does the hub offer?
The hub equips healthcare planners, clinicians and industry leaders with actionable tools and insights to drive sustainable decision-making. Through this platform, you can access:
- practical frameworks and tools: including our patient care pathway carbon calculator and step-by-step guidance
- evidence and application: real-world case studies, implementation guides and the latest publications
- shared learning: video explainers and curated resources to help you assess carbon hotspots and model sustainable interventions for both local and global systems
Who owns it?
We’re proud to own and curate the hub. As a non-profit organisation, the Sustainable Healthcare Coalition is dedicated to inspiring and equipping the healthcare sector to transition to more sustainable practices. The hub’s ongoing development and rich pool of resources are made possible by our Patient Care Pathway (PCP) members.
Join the conversation
Sustainability is a collaborative effort. Connect with global peers, share your own findings, and ask questions by joining our active Community of Practice – a space to learn from others working on the same challenges and to help shape the conversation as the field develops.
The care pathway approach
A care pathway traces a patient’s full journey through the healthcare system for a specific condition, from referral to discharge or long-term management. Every stage uses resources – clinical time, medicines, devices, travel and energy – and a care pathway assessment maps these to show where emissions arise and where change would have most impact.
Healthcare accounts for 4–5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, much of it from care delivery rather than buildings or logistics. By looking at the whole system, not individual products or facilities, care pathway assessment helps cut emissions without compromising patient safety or care. Our framework offers a structured, repeatable approach, from defining the pathway to taking action.
The Patient Care Pathway Consortium
Over a decade ago, we set out to embed environmental sustainability into how healthcare value is understood across the patient journey. Working with NHS England, we developed the method that underpins care pathway assessment.
That work has grown into the Patient Care Pathway (PCP) Consortium, a pre-competitive initiative that brings together leading pharmaceutical, medtech and health insurance organisations to build the evidence base for sustainable care.
Alongside NHS partners, our members contribute data, case studies and expertise to shared projects, and their findings are openly available to the wider healthcare community.
Specialist care pathways
Alongside our core care pathway work, we partner with specialist clinical communities to apply the approach in depth to specific areas of care. Maternity and kidney care are two examples: both are high-volume, resource-intensive specialties where mapping the pathway has helped identify carbon hotspots and support clinical teams to take practical action.
In maternity, we worked with leading professional bodies on Green Maternity Care, exploring where carbon impact and health inequity overlap. In kidney care, where dialysis is around 18 times more carbon-intensive per patient than average NHS care, our work ranges from footprinting in-centre haemodialysis to supporting a net zero framework for UK renal services.
Decarbonising care pathways
Once you know a care pathway’s carbon footprint, you can focus on its hotspots, the points where changes to care delivery will make the biggest difference. Reducing emissions should never come at the cost of patient safety or experience.
Common opportunities include cutting unnecessary prescribing, tests and referrals, choosing lower-carbon alternatives such as greener inhalers and anaesthetics, offering remote or same-day appointments to reduce travel, and minimising single-use consumables and waste.
Our guidance sets out practical actions across general, community and hospital care.
Care pathways resource library
Explore our library of care pathway resources, including case studies, video explainers and publications from us and our PCP Consortium members.
Get involved
Whether you want to connect with peers, start your own assessment, or share feedback on how to improve the hub, here’s where to go next.
Upcoming events
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